The real stories from inside the F1 paddock

Sauber signs Gutierrez and Frijns

Sauber F1 Team has confirmed Esteban Gutierrez as its second race driver alongside Nico Hülkenberg. Robin Frijns, who is only two days younger than Esteban, has been signed as the team’s test and reserve driver.

“Esteban has already been part of the team for a long time and we have followed his career very closely,” said Team Principal Monisha Kaltenborn. “In 2010 we signed him up as an affiliated driver, and in 2011 and 2012 he was our test and reserve driver. We mapped out his path to Formula One step by step. Esteban has great talent and now he’s ready to take the leap. We are in no doubt we have a strong driver pairing in place for the 2013 season with Nico Hülkenberg and Esteban Gutiérrez. I would very much like to say a few words about Kamui Kobayashi as well. Over the last three years Kamui has shown us he is not only a fierce competitor on the track, but also a wonderful person and fantastic team player. Every member of our team has the greatest respect for him, and his podium in Japan was a particularly emotional moment for all of us. This has not been an easy decision for us to take, but we have committed ourselves to a new beginning and our time with Kamui will come to an end after the final two races of the season. We wish Kamui all the best for the future. Our thanks also go to Sergio Pérez, who has claimed three podiums for the team so far and now has the opportunity at McLaren-Mercedes to display his immense talent with one of the most successful teams in Formula One history. We would also like to wish Sergio all the best and every success for the future.”

Not really a surprise Sergio got confused: Even the press release refers to, “our time with Kamui [coming] to an end after the final two races of the season,” implying the text was intended to be released last week – there now being just one race remaining. The intriguing question is why delay that extra week when the decision had so clearly been taken?

Assuming that is a direct quote from Monisha then it appears they intended to make the announcement earlier – talking about the final two races of the season gives that away a bit…

A shame for Kamui, he is a decent driver but I guess just not good enough to get a seat without some money behind him and with HRT disappearing there are less seats around anyway.

Looking at all the names that are out there you could easily run a second-string series that would feature very talented drivers if you could make it cost-effective… Not something like GP2 which is regarded as a young driver development series, something that gives drivers – and even potential teams – a grounding in how F1 works without the pressure.

Does that press release really say that “our time with Kamui will come to an end after the final two races of the season.”??? If so it reads like something drafted for the Abu Dhabi weekend that was put on hold for some reason and has now been released without the edits it needed to make it look like the decsion was taken only very recently.

“The final two races…” oi, did I miss anything? I thought Brazil was the final race of the year, or does Sauber also enter another series?
Anyway on topic, sad to see Kamui go, he will most likely never get another shot at F1. You need to be either a huge talent and/or bring huge amounts of money. In the old days a lot of drivers used to get a shot at F1 based on a hunch of a team boss. That brought us the likes of Kimi or Alan Jones. It seems like Kamui was the last his kind.
Or am I overreacting? Or getting old?

Monisha Kaltenborn explicitly said a week ago that Kamui did not need funding to keep his seat. Kamui says that he did need funding.

Is one of them lying?

Or perhaps the subtext to Monisha Kaltenborn’s remarks is something like “Funding is now irrelevant to Kamui keeping his seat because we have already decided on Gutierrez, but if Kamui had brought us $10M as we asked him to after Suzuka, he would now have a drive.”

Frijns may not have the backing of a company like Red Bull or Telmex but to say he doesn’t have any money, is not quite the truth. His family owns the Frijns Industrial Group which is a Dutch steel construction company with a division in the Middle East. That said, he is a very talented driver.

With the financial troubles at Force India is there any possibility of a buy-out by Honda? They’d be a good middle of the grid outfit to take over and may not cost much if Vijay’s desperate for cash. If Honda are developing a new engine for McLaren could they be tempted with another shot at running a works team? A competitive Japanese driver like Kobayashi in a Japanese works team would be good PR. Ridiculously speculative I know, but impossible?

Huge shame about Kobayashi. Really didn’t deserve that. Surprised also that Sauber don’t see the continuity benefit in keeping at least one of their drivers the same – I guess promoting Gutierrez will help a bit with that, but given the lack of track time such drivers get these days…